http://golang.org Sunday, October 3, 2010
The Expressiveness of Go Rob Pike JAOO Oct 5, 2010 http://golang.org Sunday, October 3, 2010
Who 2 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Team Russ Cox Robert Griesemer Rob Pike Ian Taylor Ken Thompson plus David Symonds, Nigel Tao, Andrew Gerrand, Stephen Ma, and others, plus many contributions from the open source community. 3 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Why Why a new language? 4 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Why Go? A response to Google’s internal needs: - efficient large scale programming - speed of compilation - distributed systems - multicore, networked hardware And a reaction to: “speed and safety or ease of use; pick one.” - complexity, weight, noise (C++, Java) vs. - no static checking (JavaScript, Python) Go is statically typed and compiled, like C++ or Java (with no VM), but in many ways feels as lightweight and dynamic as JavaScript or Python. 5 Sunday, October 3, 2010
The surprise It turned out to be a nice general purpose language. That was unexpected. The most productive language I’ve ever used. And some people agree. 6 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Acceptance Go was the 2009 TIOBE "Language of the year" two months after it was released and it won an InfoWorld BOSSIE award. 7 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Why the success? This acceptance was a pleasant surprise. But in retrospect, the way we approached the design was important to the expressiveness and productivity of Go. 8 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Principles The axioms of Go’s design 9 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Principles Go is: Simple - concepts are easy to understand - (the implementation might still be sophisticated) Orthogonal - concepts mix cleanly - easy to understand and predict what happens Succinct - no need to predeclare every intention Safe - misbehavior should be detected These combine to give expressiveness. 10 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Respect Go trusts the programmer to write down what is meant. In turn, Go tries to respect the programmer's intentions. It's possible to be safe and fun. There's a difference between seat belts and training wheels. 11 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Simplicity Number of keywords is an approximate measure of complexity. C (K&R) K&R 32 C++ 1991 48 Java 3rd edition 50 C# 2010 77 C++0x 2010 72+11* JavaScript ECMA-262 26+16* Python 2.7 31 Pascal ISO 35 Modula-2 1980 40 Oberon 1990 32 Go 2010 25 * extra count is for reserved words and alternate spellings 12 Sunday, October 3, 2010
An example A complete (if simple) web server 13 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Hello, world 2.0 Serving http://localhost:8080/world : package main import ( "fmt" "http" ) func handler(c *http.Conn, r *http.Request) { fmt.Fprintf(c, "Hello, %s.", r.URL.Path[1:]) } func main() { http.ListenAndServe(":8080", http.HandlerFunc(handler)) } 14 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Stories A few design tales that illustrate how the principles play out. Not close to a complete tour of Go. 15 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Basics Some fundamentals 16 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Starting points Go started with a few important simplifications relative to C/C++, informed by our experience with those languages: There are pointers but no pointer arithmetic - pointers are important to performance, pointer arithmetic not. - although it's OK to point inside a struct. - important to control layout of memory, avoid allocation Increment/decrement ( p++ ) is a statement, not expression. - no confusion about order of evaluation Addresses last as long as they are needed. - take the address of a local variable, the implementation guarantees the memory survives while it's referenced. No implicit numerical conversions ( float to int , etc.). - C's "usual arithmetic conversions" are a minefield. 17 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Constants are ideal Implicit conversions often involve constants ( sin(Pi/4) ), but Go mitigates the issue by having nicer constants. Constants are "ideal numbers": no size or sign, hence no L or U or UL endings. 077 // octal 0xFEEDBEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEF // hexadecimal 1 << 100 They are just numbers that can be assigned to variables; no conversions necessary. A typed element in the expression sets the true type of the constant. Here 1e9 becomes int64 . seconds := time.Nanoseconds()/1e9 18 Sunday, October 3, 2010
High precision constants Arithmetic with constants is high precision. Only when assigned to a variable are they rounded or truncated to fit. const Ln2= 0.6931471805599453094172321214581\ 76568075500134360255254120680009 const Log2E= 1/Ln2 // accurate reciprocal var x float64 = Log2E The value assigned to x will be as precise as possible in a 64-bit floating point number. Simple, clear model. Simple constant syntax. Constants orthogonal (nearly) to type system. 19 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Types and data Structs, methods, and interfaces 20 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Structs Structs describe (and control) the layout of data. Some early proposals included methods in the struct, but that idea was dropped. Instead methods are declared like ordinary functions, outside the type, and with a "receiver". type Point struct { x, y float } func (p Point) Abs() float { return math.Sqrt(p.x*p.x + p.y*p.y) } The (p Point) declares the receiver (no automatic " this " variable; also notice p is not a pointer, although it could be.) Methods are not mixed with the data definition. They are orthogonal to types. 21 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Methods are orthogonal to types Orthogonality of methods allows any type to have them. type Vector []float func (v Vector) Abs() float { sumOfSquares := 0.0 for i := range v { sumOfSquares += v[i]*v[i] } return math.Sqrt(sumOfSquares) } It also allows receivers to be values or pointers: func (p *Point) Scale(ratio float) { p.x, p.y = ratio*p.x, ratio*p.y } Orthogonality leads to generality. 22 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Interfaces Interfaces are just sets of methods; work for any type. type Abser interface { Abs() float } var a Abser a = Point{3, 4} print(a.Abs()) a = Vector{1, 2, 3, 4} print(a.Abs()) Interfaces are satisfied implicitly. Point and Vector do not declare that they implement Abser , they just do. @mjmoriarity: The way Go handles interfaces is the way I wish every language handled them. 23 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Interfaces are abstract, other types are concrete In some of our early proposals, interfaces could contain data, but this conflated representation and behavior. Made them distinct: - concrete type such as structs define data - interfaces define behavior As with methods, now anything can satisfy an interface. type Value float // basic type func (v Value) Abs() float { if v < 0 { v = -v } return v } a = Value(-27) print(a.Abs()) 24 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Interfaces are satisfied implicitly Point and Vector satisfied Abser implicitly; other types might too. A type satisfies an interface simply by implementing its methods. There is no "implements" declaration; interfaces are satisfied implicitly. It's a form of duck typing, but (usually) checkable at compile time. It's also another form of orthogonality. An object can (and usually does) satisfy many interfaces simultaneously. For instance, Point and Vector satisfy Abser and also the empty interface: interface{} , which is satisfied by any value (analogous to C++ void* or Java Object ) In Go, interfaces are usually one or two (or zero) methods. 25 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Reader type Reader interface { Read(p []byte) (n int, err os.Error) // two return vals } // And similarly for Writer Anything with a Read method implements Reader . - Sources: files, buffers, network connections, pipes - Filters: buffers, checksums, decompressors, decrypters JPEG decoder takes a Reader , so it can decode from disk, network, gzipped HTTP, .... Buffering just wraps a Reader : var bufferedInput Reader = bufio.NewReader(os.Stdin) Fprintf uses a Writer : func Fprintf(w Writer, fmt string, a ...interface{}) 26 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Interfaces enable retrofitting Had an existing RPC implementation that used custom wire format. Changed to an interface: type Encoding interface { ReadRequestHeader(*Request) os.Error ReadRequestBody(interface{}) os.Error WriteResponse(*Response, interface{}) os.Error Close() os.Error } Two functions (send, receive) changed signature. Before: func sendResponse(sending *sync.Mutex, req *Request, reply interface{}, enc *gob.Encoder, err string) After (and similarly for receiving): func sendResponse(sending *sync.Mutex, req *Request, reply interface{}, enc Encoding, err string) That is almost the whole change to the RPC implementation. 27 Sunday, October 3, 2010
Post facto abstraction We saw an opportunity: RPC needed only Encode and Decode methods. Put those in an interface and you've abstracted the codec. Total time: 20 minutes, including writing and testing the JSON implementation of the interface. (We also wrote a trivial wrapper to adapt the existing codec for the new rpc.Encoding interface.) In Java, RPC would be refactored into a half-abstract class, subclassed to create JsonRPC and StandardRPC . You'd have to plan ahead. In Go it's simpler and the design adapts through experience. 28 Sunday, October 3, 2010
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